The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
A wireless local area network (WLAN) typically permits wireless communication between multiple network devices. A WLAN can be operated in a number of different modes including, for example, an “ad hoc mode”. In a wireless network that operates according to the ad hoc mode (referred to herein as a peer-to-peer (P2P) network), network devices communicate directly with each other rather than through a central base station (or access point).
A peer device can discover other peer devices within a P2P network by (i) passively listening for beacons or probe requests (also referred to as “probe frames”) or (ii) actively searching for other peer devices by sending probe requests. A peer device can respond to a probe request with a probe response (also referred to as a “response frame”).